There's Browser in My SSH

Shawn Powers — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 21:44:27 +0000

No, there's SSH in my browser! Although it may not be as logical of a combination as chocolate and peanut butter, for Chromebook users, an HTML5 SSH client is pretty amazing. Granted, Google's "crosh" shell has SSH abilities, but it's a very limited implementation. With the Chrome extension "Secure Shell", it's easy to SSH in to remote servers and interact like a traditional terminal window—mostly.

Secure Shell is getting better all the time, and at the time of this writing, it supports port forwarding, logging in with keys, socks proxying and even many keyboard shortcuts for programs like Irssi. The keyboard shortcut support isn't perfect, but for me at least, it's manageable.

Figure 1. It's simple. It's texty. It's awesome.

If you're a Chromebook user and want a real SSH client, give the "Secure Shell" extension a try. Heck, regardless of the OS you're using (I'm looking at you, Windows), it's a fast way to get a secure connection. It's being developed by Google, and it's free via the Play Store.

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Shell Game

Shawn Powers — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:45:38 +0000

by Shawn Powers

Many of the cool things in Linux Journal require the use of the command line. For us Linux users, that's generally not a big deal, because we have a terminal window readily available. Some of the time, however, it's helpful to have a shell account on an Internet host somewhere.

If your Web-hosting service provides shell access, you might be able to use it for rudimentary command-line procedures. (In fact, Dreamhost in particular allows SSH tunneling through its servers for clients.) If you want to use particular programs like screen or irssi though, it will require something a little more robust.

Some free shell services are available (like https://www.geekshells.org), but they often are very restrictive, and it can be challenging to get an account with them. Thankfully, if you don't mind spending a few dollars a month, shell accounts are fairly common and relatively inexpensive. The Eggdrop folks have compiled a great list here: https://www.egghelp.org/shells.htm.

Figure 1. Sometimes, you just need a shell.

Of course, if you want to have a full-blown server on the Internet, it's hard to beat a colocated Raspberry Pi server like the one Kyle Rankin talked about last month. However you manage it, it's hard to be a geek without access to a terminal!

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